HTTP - which can be further subdivided into the web page access, the Twitter API, and
RSS and Atom feeds

I'm not going to talk about the first two, since I'm not familiar with the technical details of
how they work. Other than to notice that I don't see how Twitter can be generating any
direct revenue off of HTTP (no ads on the web pages, even), whereas they could certainly be
generating revenue of off the
SMS traffic they drive to whoever hosts their SMS service. IM? Dunno.

It would appear, or at least I guess, that most of the folks I follow on Twitter are
using HTTP, rather than the other communication mediums. Maybe I'm in a microcosm here,
but I'm guessing there are a lot of people who only use the HTTP medium. And there's
no money to be made there.

So, we got a web site getting absolutely pounded, that's generating no direct revenue
for the traffic it's handling.
And it's become a bottleneck. What might we do?

Distribute the load.

Here's a thought on how this might work. Instead of people posting messages to
Twitter, have them post to their own site, just like a blog. HTTP-based Twitter
clients could then feed off of the personal sites, instead of going through the
Twitter.com bottleneck.

This sounds suspiciously like blogging, no? Well, it is a lot like blogging.
Twitter itself is a lot like blogging to begin with. Only the posts have to be at most 140 bytes.
So let's start thinking about it in
that light, and see what tools and techniques we can bring from that world.

For instance, my Twitter 'friends' are nothing but a feed aggregator like
Planet Planet or
Venus.
Only the software to do this would be a lot easier.

So, why would Twitter ever want to do something like this? I already
mentioned they don't seem to be making any direct revenue off the HTTP traffic, so
off-loading some of that is simply going to lower their network bill. They
could concentrate instead, in providing some kind of value, such as
contact management and discovery.
Index the TwitterSphere, instead of owning and bottlenecking it.
And of course continue to handle SMS and IM traffic, if that happens to
bring in some cash.

In the end, I'm not sure any one company can completely 'own' a protocol like this forever.
Either they simply won't be able to afford to (expense at running it, combined
with a lack of revenue), or something better will come along to replace it.

If you love something, set it free.

There are other ideas. In
"Twitter Premium?",
Dave Winer suggests building Twitter "peers". This sounds like distributing Twitter from
one central site, to a small number of sites. I don't think that's good enough. Things will
scale better with millions of sites.